What's Renku?


whoever dammed
Saho’s water
to plant rice fields —Nun

should be the only one
to harvest the rice —Yakamochi

Be it ever so humble, this jointly-written waka is the first renku that we know of: written by two people with alternating 3-phrase and 2-phrase verses.

YakamochiBuddhist nun

This shortest type of renku later came to be known as a tan renga ("short linked verse form").


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